A Family Affair


Summit Steward Luke Fiermonti first explored Acadia with his grandmother Maureen Fournier, a former Park Ranger, when he was a kid. He’s spent the last three summers helping visitors love it, too.

BY SHANNON BRYAN

When Luke Fiermonti was 9 years old, he was sworn in as a Junior Ranger at Acadia National Park. He was sworn in by Park Ranger Maureen Fournier, who also happened to be his grandmother—and who still has Luke’s paper Junior Ranger badge as a memento of the occasion.

That wasn’t the first time Luke was sworn in—nor the last. “I think I’ve sworn in Luke and [his younger brother] Joey as Junior Rangers at least three times,” Maureen said. Swearing kids in was her favorite part of being a park ranger at Acadia, a “dream job” she held for 10 years.

When Luke, Joey, and their parents travelled to other national parks, he’d get sworn in there, too. He got a kick out of it.

Growing up in Durham, New Hampshire, Luke says his family spent a good deal of time outdoors—hiking, swimming, road and mountain biking. Over summers, when Luke came up to Maine to visit his grandparents, Maureen and Gerry, they spent the bulk of their time outside, too.

Left: Summit Steward Luke Fiermonti. (Photo by Julia Walker Thomas/Friends of Acadia) Right top: Luke rebuilds Bates
cairns on the summit of Cadillac Mountain. (Photo by Evie Linantud/Friends of Acadia) Right bottom: Luke and his grandmother, Maureen Fournier, take a selfie during a hike in 2017. (Photo courtesy Maureen Fournier)

“My whole family knows, when they come here, we’re going to be outside,” Maureen said. “I can remember one of his first trips up here with his parents…Luke was 4 years old. I took him up Beech Mountain to the fire tower. He came home and painted a picture of Beech Mountain.”

Most summers after that, Luke and Joey would return to Maine to visit their Nana and Pop Pop and spend a week exploring trails, reveling in summit views, and being immersed in nature.

“Luke took to it right away,” Maureen said. And while she adores all six of her grandkids, she said, “Luke and I always have the strongest connection to Acadia. He loves it here.”

One of those annual visits Luke fondly recalls was the year Maureen suggested they all participate in Acadia Quest, a family-friendly scavenger hunt that gets kids engaged in the park. Managed by Friends of Acadia, the scavenger hunt leads participants to interesting corners of the park to complete fun activities and learn neat things about each location. Luke loved it.

“We did the quest and became enthralled with the park even more,” Luke said. “It opened our eyes to so many more activities you can do in and around MDI.”

Fast forward a decade and a half later and Luke is still spending summers in Acadia—sometimes back on Beech Mountain—working seasonally as one of Friends of Acadia’s Summit Stewards. This past summer was his third year.

Summit Stewards work in the field on Acadia’s summits and trails, engaging with visitors to both answer questions and help those visitors be better stewards of the park by following Leave No Trace principles.

As a Friends of Acadia Summit Steward, Luke rebuilds Bates cairns on the summit of Cadillac Mountain. (Photo by Evie Linantud/Friends of Acadia)

They also conduct basic trail maintenance, repair cairns, respond to emergencies, communicate with park managers, collect social science data—and swear in Junior Rangers.

It’s work that suits Luke well. “Acadia holds a very special place in my heart,” he said. “I can help educate visitors about Acadia’s natural and cultural history.”

One of his favorite places to engage visitors is at the foot of Beehive, right at the intersection of the Bowl and Beehive Trails. It’s an apt place to talk to hikers about proper footwear, slippery conditions, and whether walking along ledges and climbing iron rungs feels within their comfort level (and, if not, to suggest alternate routes). But Luke additionally loves that location because he can mingle in some Acadia education in favorite subject area: geology.

“I talk about why it’s called Beehive. We can look straight up from there and see that beehive shape,” he said. “I usually tell them that, 16,000 to 17,000 years ago, the Laurentide ice sheet took all those chunks of cliff away and deposited them in the ocean.”

All that rock makes for an easy segue into talking about durable surfaces, too, and why walking on durable surfaces— and not trampling fragile vegetation—is so important. That’s one of the seven Leave No Trace principles.

Left: Luke Fiermonti poses for a selfie with his grandmother, a former Park Ranger (now NPS volunteer), Maureen Fournier. (Photo courtesy Maureen Fournier). Right top: Luke dismantles unauthorized rock stacks along Bar Island. (Photo by Ashley L. Conti/Friends of Acadia). Right bottom: A park visitor is reflected in Luke’s sunglasses. (Photo by Evie Linantud/Friends of Acadia)

Another of Luke’s favorite park locations is Bubble Rock. “It’s a glacial erratic. It’s a different kind of granite than everywhere else,” Luke said. “It’s Lucerne granite from 40 miles north. A glacier carried it 40 miles and dropped it there atop Cadillac Mountain pink granite.”

He’ll point out areas with glacial polishing or striations. On the Cadillac Cliffs Trail on Gorham Mountain, hikers pass the remnants of an old sea cave. “I explain to visitors that’s where sea level used to be, which they really enjoy learning,” he said. Luke and his fellow Summit Stewards also engage visitors on the summit of Cadillac Mountain. With so many visitors enjoying the views there, it’s a prime opportunity to talk about the important collaborative work happening on Acadia’s summits to restore subalpine vegetation.

When visitors pause to read tripod signs describing the work, Luke might strike up a conversation about the importance of protecting our native species, preventing soil erosion, and how this work has expanded to other summits in the park.

“I find a lot of people are interested in talking more in depth,” he said. And those conversations add up—Summit Stewards have upwards of 20,000 visitor interactions a season—leading to a more knowledgeable visitorship.

As a Summit Steward, Luke educates visitors; in the process, his knowledge of the park has deepened, too. Despite being well versed in the park’s trails and captivating features, its human and geological history—and even leveling up his plant identification—he still gets visitor questions he doesn’t know the answer to. He’ll Google those later, learn the answer, and be prepared for the next time the question comes up.

“It’s just such an interesting and diverse place,” he said.

Summit Stewards Chiara Jeanfils and Luke give each other high-fives while postering about the Leave No Trace Seven Principles on the Jordan Pond Path. (Photo by Lily LaRegina/Friends of Acadia)

Luke headed back to his senior year at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington this fall. After he graduates, he’d like to get into hands-on field research.

“I had the opportunity to go out with the park’s vegetation crew; we sprayed herbicide on glossy buckthorn, one of the most problematic invasives shrubs that we have in the park,” he said. “That really stuck with me. I think something similar, field-research-wise, is what I’d like to pursue in the future…something that’s a blend of field research and still interacting with visitors.”

Whatever shape his future takes, he’s sure to carry forward his love for the outdoors and Acadia—a connection he’ll forever share with his grandmother.

Friends of Acadia Summit Steward Luke Fiermonti talks to park visitors on the summit of Cadillac Mountain. (Photo by Evie Linantud/Friends of Acadia)

For Maureen’s part, she’s still walking Acadia’s trails. Two years ago, her husband Gerry passed away after battling Alzheimer’s disease. While he was sick, she and Gerry continued to walk Acadia’s trails. Gerry also volunteered on the park’s sign crew.

“It gave Gerry joy, and it gave me joy. But even more, we just love this place. We were out on the trails every day that we could. I think it kept him alive a little bit longer.” When she’s on the trails now, walking those familiar paths she used to walk with Gerry, she still talks to him. “It restores me. When things are tough, there’s where I head,” she said. “That’s the other thing about this park. There’s healing.”

She’s also staying connected with the park as a Waldron’s Warriors volunteer. A crew of 15 or so volunteers monitor the park’s trails, doing light maintenance and cairn rebuilding and reporting more significant issues back to Dianna Sproul, volunteer coordinator at Acadia National Park, and Steph Ley, Summit Steward coordinator at Friends of Acadia.

It’s work that keeps her tangibly engaged with the park. The influence that’s harder to quantify, but so incredibly impactful, is the legacy she’s passed on to her family and to each of the visitors she met as a park ranger—especially all those kids she swore in as Junior Rangers. They are the stewards of tomorrow.

“It’s a continuum,” she said. “It gives me hope, when everything is chaos, you have these young people. You can see the beauty that is part of our world, that they see and want to continue. She sees that in her grandson, Luke.

“Speaking as his grandmother, it makes me very proud,” she said. “He gets it, he sees it.”


SHANNON BRYAN is Friends of Acadia’s Interim Vice President of Communications.